From the ACLU, this is at Liberty.

I'm Emerson Sykes, a staff attorney here at the ACLU and your host.

Today's guest is Professor Paul Butler, the author of Chokehold, Policing Black Men,

which he describes as a renegade former prosecutor's radical thoughts on how to disrupt the system.

Professor Butler, who teaches at Georgetown Law, is also the author of Let's Get Free, a hip-hop theory of justice.

Through his books, his scholarship, and his activism,

Professor Butler is committed to addressing the deep problems in our criminal justice system

in ways that are accessible and compelling to the people who bear the brunt of the system's oppression.

He is both a pragmatist and a revolutionary, and we're lucky to have him join us today. We'll discuss

his career as a prosecutor, scholar, and public thinker, as well as how to break free of the

systemic chokehold that is American policing. Professor Butler, thanks very much for taking the time

to speak with us. Welcome to the podcast. Hey, Emerson. It's great to be here. So the chokehold became famous or infamous, I should say, with Eric Gardner and the I Can't Breathe t-shirts worn by LeBron James and many others. Your book talks about literal police chokeholds, which the New York Times recently reported are still being used despite the fact that they're illegal. But you also talk about the

metaphorical chokehold. Can you give us a brief description of what you're trying to address in the book?

What do you mean when you talk about a chokehold? I mean a system that is set up to get African-American

men in its grip. The criminal legal process today is all about African-American men. Now, that doesn't mean

that we are the only subjects of the vast power of police and prosecutors. But when we ask,

how did things get this bad? Why does the United States lock up more people than any

country in the history of the world? You famously have 5% of the world's population, 25% of the world's

prisoners. When we ask, why are prisons such violent, brutal places?

When I was a prosecutor and I had to go to a jail to interview a witness,

the first thing I would do when I left was to go home and take a shower.

Prisons are horrible places that you wouldn't want to send anybody you cared about to.

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